Read it. The applet itself is pretty entertaining. I like the little picture of me with a fairly accurate representation of my spare tire. Bryan’s right, though — actuarial predictions based on current data are like CBO estimates: they’re static rather than dynamic, and therefore systematically biased.

Napoleon Bonaparte.

Charlemagne.

Julius Caesar.

Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Ronald Reagan.

Karl Marx.

Mother Theresa.

etc.

Safire pursues the latest buzzwords into the underbrush.

Cringely always has good stuff, but I’m not sure about the applicability of this for the home; it would appear not to be cost-effective. But, of course, as we all know, what’s not cost-effective today may be dirt cheap and in everyone’s pocket in five years. So we’ll see.

I’ve long thought that we now have the technology available to us to do sort of semi-telecommuting, where a company has, instead of a lot of people in one central location, a bunch of small offices spotted around a metropolitan area (like DFW?) more central to where employees are likely to live.

Say a company has employees who live in Plano, Irving, Carrollton, and Arlington; have four small offices in each city in the little office complexes that are everywhere these days, and people just go to the nearest one as their work site.

Everybody uses e-mail and IM and conference calls these days anyway; in a high-tech company it’s just as easy to ship bytes across town as down the hall. Not only would this dramatically reduce commute times (making the employees happier and the environmentalists happier), but it would reduce the prospects of some disaster like a fire or a hurricane or a power outage killing the entire company’s productivity.

Read it. And this one is Steve’s fault, not Ma Bell’s.

Read it. And the hits just keep on comin’.

Read it. In case you were wondering. I know I was.

Read it. It’s good to see the legal system stumble into some sense every now and then.

Read it. Sometimes listening to the experts is a bad thing.

We have a new comic strip, Stone Soup, thanks to the guys at Language Log. See the sidebar.

Read it. In case you were wondering. I know I was.

The problem with the whole “calorie restriction” thesis is that I don’t see any thin poor people living longer than fat rich people. But maybe it’s just me.

Read it. My kind of place.

Read it. As granny used to say, God never closes a door without opening a window.

Read it. Well, it makes a lot of sense. Why pay double for the same service?

Read it. Many’s the time I wish I had a laptop in a meeting….

Read it. And about time, too.

Read it. Not really surprising, but it’s good to know they’re starting to nail down the details.

Read it. This is an extremely interesting and useful idea.

Safire on language.

LanguageLog. If you don’t have any enemies, can you be said to exist? And could you possibly get a book contract?

Read it. And yet again the free market steps forward to supply the deficiencies in the “public sector”.

Read it. Paging Dr McCoy….

Read it. I don’t care who you are, that’s funny.

NYT. Another must-read.

Engadget. These look very interesting.

WT. I’ll refrain from making the obvious political joke here.

Engadget. Ah, Steve, Steve. When will you learn? No group of us is as smart as all of us.

Engadget. This would be useful in a number of contexts — I’m thinking of secure government facilities, right off the bat.

Engadget. This is just cool.

NYT. Well, some people collect stamps, some people DNA-map marijuana. Everybody’s got to have a hobby.

NYT. Interesting stuff, but I wonder about the firm and definite statements concerning something that happened millions of years ago. I’d be more confident if they were a little less confident.

LanguageLog. If that didn’t grab your attention, I don’t know what will.

FuturePundit. Just so you know.

Want to cut your transportation death rates much further? Don’t travel. This applies to both short and long trips and it also saves time. Schedule trip activities to do them in batches so that you make few trips. Take jobs closer to home or move closer to your job. Telecommute. Use teleconferencing and email rather than road trips.

Hear, hear!

FuturePundit.

FuturePundit. Well, that would explain why socialists act like arrested adolescents.

NYT. Everything you probably didn’t ever want to know about bridges.

NYT. Getting in touch with your fashionable-minority roots. The search for a ticket to a government affirmative-action program.

PowerLine. A good analysis of the Padilla case.

Safire on language. Always worth reading.

Engadget. This is an excellent idea.

Cringely. If that doesn’t get your attention, I don’t know what will.

Engadget. We seem to be making steady progress toward the day when we can take ground-up plastic waste and create new products to order in the home cheaply. Jane Jacobs was of opinion that modern trash would be an effective source of raw materials once technology advanced to the stage where we could take advantage of it, and she was confident that the day would come. As am I.

LanguageLog. Not that anyone in his right mind would look to George W Bush as a model for how to speak.

StrangeMaps. I can vouch for it.

Engadget. Not a bad idea these days.

Pogue. Speed the day….

Engadget. Pretty clever. Wonder if it would work in home or car air conditioners?

Read it. Hey, I thought there was something fishy about that age.

Researchers found that it takes men until they reach the age of 65 to start enjoying life as much as they did in their late-teens and early-20s.

Yeah, and I can’t wait.

LanguageLog. Confirmation that computer software is designed for computer software designers rather than real users.

Techdirt. My, that certainly surprises me. Doesn’t that surprise you?